Summary: Analysis of the whole TrueCrypt fiasco and response to the blaming of FOSS (where the licences are clearly not FOSS)

PROPRIETARY software should be assumed insecure by design, as it often contains back doors and one simply cannot prove otherwise. Based on experience alone, a lot of proprietary software comes with back doors, sometimes accidentally but not always. A lot has been written about this before, both here and elsewhere, so we are not going to write so much on this subject. Instead we wish to focus on the news that TrueCrypt development is moving to Switzerland (the first article we found about this is [1] and there is also some analysis [2]). The PATRIOT Act comes to mind and also the experiences of secure mail services in the United States, including Edward Snowden’s E-mail provider. When Groklaw shut down, citing concerns over NSA spying, it recommended that people adopt Kolab, which is based in Switzerland. It should be emphasised that Switzerland harbours privacy not because of humanitarian interests but because of national interests. For domestic prosperity it facilitates international crime (tax evasion from all nations) and wishes to guard the criminals.

The problems with TrueCrypt are not new to us; I very much predicted what the news insinuates and I had received flack for saying so. TrueCrypt has been thoroughly and even successfully openwashed based on some odd kind of marketing angle; those close to the project know better how it works and if an audit which is not transparent is needed for TrueCrypt, then we should quickly realise that the build process and some components are wrapped in a riddle/mystery. The very core of the problem, including its build process, are very crucial. The announcement from TrueCrypt was as vague — not transparent — as the project itself.

Now it is widely known that TrueCrypt gave an illusion of privacy, which is in many ways worse than having no privacy at all because there is impact on users’ behaviour. We may never know how many people have gone to jail or were killed because of TrueCrypt’s false promise.

FOSS-hostile sites try to spin that as an issue with FOSS even though it’s not FOSS. One source states: “The abrupt announcement that the widely used, anonymously authored disk-encryption tool Truecrypt is insecure and will no longer be maintained shocked the crypto world–after all, this was the tool Edward Snowden himself lectured on at a Cryptoparty in Hawai’i.”

Snowden uses Debian GNU/Linux (Tails) and the main reporter he worked with, Glenn Greenwald, only recently dumped Microsoft Windows and moved to GNU/Linux.

There has been a lot more coverage about it [1, 2], including the usual scaremongering by Mr. Goodin, who wrote about it not once but twice, saying: “One of the official webpages for the widely used TrueCrypt encryption program says that development has abruptly ended and warns users of the decade-old tool that it isn’t safe to use.”

The plutocrats’ press, Forbes, called it “Open Source” (in the headline), so it can’t even get its basic facts right:

Over the past 24 hours the website for TrueCrypt (a very widely used encryption solution) was updated with a rather unusually styled message stating that TrueCrypt is “considered harmful” and should not be used. If you have not come across TrueCrypt and why it has become so popular see the below section ‘why do people use TrueCrypt’.

Knowing that Microsoft is an NSA partner, Gordon in our IRC channels felt baffled because TrueCrypt is “now recommending bitlocker for windows”, to which Ryan replied: “Proprietary encryption from Microsoft that was designed in partnership with the NSA…”

Microsoft is talking to British police about encryption. When I wrote about this nearly a decade ago Microsoft staff were using personal insults against me, only later (much later) to realise that I was right. Sean Michael Kerner calls TrueCrypt “Open-Source” (with a dash) when he writes: “The other challenge facing TrueCrypt is the simple fact that there are many other disk-encryption technologies now available. On Microsoft’s Windows operating system in particular, which was a key target platform for TrueCrypt, versions of Windows after Windows XP include support for Bitlocker, which performs a similar function. In addition, there are multiple file-encryption technologies available, including, FileVault for Mac, DiskCryptor for Windows and Luks for Linux.”

Proprietary operating systems are not compatible with encryption for the same reason that proprietary hypervisors are not. If the NSA can infiltrate the lower layer (e.g. VM host, OS, BIOS) through back doors, then the rest (what’s above) is almost automatically compromised. No sane developer would recommend anything that’s proprietary for security and privacy. Don’t forget Microsoft'sCOFEE and CIPAV. Microsoft is very much in bed with spooks and police. Microsoft is an informant without conciousness. Privacy in Windows is not a goal; the contrary is true. One Linux/BSD site thinks that TrueCrypt is now “dead” and there is the following statement about the software licence:

Based on the wording of its license, there was always a question mark surrounding the open source-ness of Truecrypt. But that’s not the topic of this brief article. What prompted me to write this is an article that appeared in the Washington Post suggesting that TrueCrypt may have seen its last days as an (“open source”) software project.

Just remember that TrueCrypt is not FOSS.

There is another project whose software licence was blamed for lack of participation and oversight. The OSI’s President blamed the licence. That project was OpenSSL, which is now scrambling to get some more money. The Economistmakes FUD out of it while other sites take a more objective approach [4-15]. Remember this: if the project is not quite as open or free as it wants people to believe, then it might not be worth trusting. We never trusted TrueCrypt. █

The development of TrueCrypt, an open source piece of software used for on-the-fly encryption, has been terminated and users have been advised not to use it because it is not secure enough. Now, it seems that another team of developers have forked the software and rebased it in Switzerland.

The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), a project hosted by The Linux Foundation that enables technology companies, industry stakeholders and esteemed developers to collaboratively identify and fund open source projects that are in need of assistance, today announced five new backers, the first projects to receive funding from the Initiative and the Advisory Board members who will help identify critical infrastructure projects most in need of support.

The Linux Foundation’s new elite tech repair team has named its initial areas of focus as it works to find and seal holes in widely-used open source software.

The Linux Foundation announced on Thursday that members of the “Core Infrastructure Initiative” (CII) will dedicate resources to working on the Network Time Protocol, OpenSSH, and OpenSSL to hunt down and fix flaws in the tech that helps tie the internet together.

“All software development requires support and funding. Open source software is no exception and warrants a level of support on par with the dominant role it plays supporting today’s global information infrastructure,” said Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation.

Summary: Some timely examples of facts being abandoned and an alternative reality being introduced by Microsoft-funded firms and lobbyists

FOR nearly 8 years we have focused on tackling FUD and showing where the FUD came from. Public perceptions and truths (objective facts) are an abyss apart when massive PR agencies do what they’re paid to do, which is to screw with public perceptions and drive the population further away from the truth (for a profit).

In Microsoft’s parallel universe, only the desktop counts and GNU/Linux is still somewhat of an underdog with 1% market share. Microsoft relies on corruptible voices to spread such myths and it is improperly counting share in other areas, not just on desktops/laptops.

Charlie Demerjian, whom Microsoft tried to corrupt with some freebies (he declined), has published this long article titled “Microsoft is now irrelevant to computing, and they want you to know it” (highly recommended read).

To quote one portion: “With two major cave-ins in the past few weeks, Microsoft is screaming at the top of its lungs about how irrelevant it is. If you didn’t understand the fall of Microsoft from powerful monopolist to computing afterthought, let SemiAccurate explain it to you.

“For the past few decades, Microsoft has been a monopoly with one game plan, leverage what they have to exclude competition. If someone had a good idea, Microsoft would come out with a barely functional copy, give it away, and shut out the income stream of the innovator. Novell, Netscape, Pen, and countless others were crushed by this one dirty trick, and the hardware world bowed to Redmond’s whims.”

Here is more: “Competition was likewise non-existent, anyone that tried was shut out of new PCs, shut out of interoperability, had revenues devastated by free offerings from Microsoft, and many other similar monopoly games. Microsoft was the proverbial fat and lazy behemoth that was quite content to count their money and turn screws on customers whenever they needed more. If you doubt the seriousness of this stagnation, ask yourself what the last innovation Microsoft came up with was, not evolution but true innovation. I can’t think of any either.”

Here is the part about GNU/Linux: “Similarly with Linux, Microsoft just made sure that no OEM could bundle it with PCs, any that tried paid a high price. It was shut out. On the datacenter side however, Microsoft couldn’t force bundle Windows Server, customers put their own software on. For some strange reason, most large datacenters balk at paying $2000+ per two sockets for something that is vastly inferior to manage, slower, more resource hungry, and completely insecure versus the free alternative.

“Microsoft’s server market share went from 66%+ of sockets to less than 30% in five years, mostly due to datacenters and consolidation. Please don’t look for this to be reflected in the numbers from the big consulting houses, they are too afraid of revenue loss to count sockets. Instead they use the metrics that their customers want them to use, and only count sales of servers from certain vendors and sold OSes, a small fraction of the market. Microsoft didn’t just lose the server market, they were blown out of the water and have no way to recover. Other than internal services, Microsoft is just not relevant in the cloud. If you doubt this, go price a server instance from Rackspace, keep hardware constant and only vary the OS. Game over.”

Demerjian is alluding right there at the start to Gartner and IDC, two firms that create an illusion that Microsoft is relevant on servers (in top Web servers Microsoft is at around 9% and in HPC Microsoft is hardly even at 1%).

Then come mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) which basically count as computers quite comparable to laptops. Demerjian writes: “That said most people didn’t grasp how badly Microsoft had fallen, they were totally irrelevant and had no more monopoly to leverage. This played out with the Windows 8 launch, Microsoft was desperately trying to stay relevant in mobile by forcing the entire computing ecosystem to adopt their new mobile OS. In theory this would lead to software being leveraged across platforms, and between Office and Exchange, they could force people to use Microsoft mobile products.

“A funny thing happened though, an entire generation of users didn’t want to give up their beloved iPhones or Android devices for an inferior, slower, more expensive, app-free Microsoft device. Microsoft repeated their threat loudly, “Use our mobile OS or you won’t get Office or Exchange on your phone!” To their abject horror the response was almost universally, “OK, bye”.”

Microsoft is now attempting to fight Linux domination in mobile devices by taxing them. Mike Masnick becomes an accidental victim of spin and deception from Microsoft lobbyist Florian Müller, spreading another myth by naming only potential costs and making it look like patents add up to $120 on a phone. It’s a shame that Masnick fell for it. Everyone knows that many phones cost far less than $120 and the nature of this warped analysis seeks to ‘normalise’ patent extortion against the likes of Android/Linux. There is agenda there. Hopefully Masnick will recognise this error because other than that he has done great work exposing Microsoft trolls like Intellectual Ventures that still do evilevery month (usually via proxies). Masnick has also covered the sham of a ‘reform’ against patent trolls, which did not happen because trolls like Intellectual Ventures lobbied Congress for years and are still doingeverything to keepthisbroken system of endless scope in place.

In order to artificially make Android more expensive Microsoft has been passing patents to patent trolls such as MOSAID. This is how Microsoft ‘competes’. Microsoft wants taxes on phones to be seen as ‘normal’, or a status quo. █

05.30.14

Summary: Amid openwashing of .NET there are yet more attempts to make mobile Linux dependent on Microsoft’s APIs

The peripheral Microsoft Corporation (allies/staff at companies such asXamarin) continues to push Mono into all sorts of Linux-centric projects such as MeeGo (wecoveredthis in prioryears) and now its successor Tizen is at risk. “Kitsilano Software are bringing C# to Tizen, in the form of the MonoTizen project,” says this article. This is part of the openwashing of .NET and also the intrusion of patented/copyrighted Microsoft APIs, not to mention code (Mono is partly written by Microsoft, with Microsoft copyrights and Microsoft licences). Serdar Yegulalp continues to contribute to this issue (lots of .NET openwashing this month [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]). Several expected sites aid a perception management campaign of Microsoft by painting .NET as “open”, including folks over at IDG, whose bias is now further revealed because the ‘former Computerworld editor” (top IDG site) calls FOSS vendors “losers”.

Watch this other Microsoft-friendly (.NET-boosting) site openwashing .NET from another angle:

JetBrains recently open sourced Nitra, a set of tooling for working with programming languages on the CLR.

The CLR is proprietary; hence, this Nitra thing is incompatible with the promise of FOSS. But that is the type of nonsense promotes by CodePlex and other Microsoft openwashing proxies. It is not about FOSS; rather, it is about looking kind of like FOSS, deceiving people and luring them into lock-in or spyware.

One story that we have ignored in recent days (it’s not in daily links) is about Mono. There has been a lot of media coverage of Unity3D because of a new release (days ago). Almost nobody who reported on bother to say it was Mono-plagued. Some FOSS sites gave it positive coverage, making the risk more alluring. █

Summary: New report about the unitary patent and its progress in Europe which worries European software proponents because it can bring software patents (and patent trolls) to the whole of the EU

Glyn Moody has read a PDF-formatted document which circulated among the likes of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (whose Web site has been almost dead for several years, just like its vocal members’ sites). This document deals with the state of the Unitary Patent and it says that things are not looking good. “That’s particularly the case for software patents,” writes Moody, “where the US experiences shows us how much damage trolls can cause. The UPC will open up Europe for software patent trolling on a massive scale.”

It has been a while since we last wrote about software patents in Europe. It does not look like things are improving. Perhaps we will return to covering these issues soon (time permitting). █

Summary: Behind the negative marketing of WhiteSource, which seeks to portray FOSS as a risk and WhiteSource as the solution

Last year we wrote about FUD from WhiteSource, which soundslikesomething 'open source' but is actually against it. An article by Microsoft proponent (for decades) Scott M. Fulton helps amplify the signal of WhiteSource, stating: “Software development teams continue to implement open source components as boilerplate, cut-and-paste code. Now, one repository service may have a way of estimating the costs.”

Like Black Duck‘s ‘software’, this effort continues to create fear and not too surprisingly some companies blacklist sites where FOSS code is available. A lot of new sites that target IT managers help spread the message from the likes of Black Duck. It’s all business.

You know who rips off stuff? Black Duck. Just ask Palamida. It’s not developers who rip off others. It’s the one hypocritical exploiter of the fear created by oneself. Black Duck is not alone in this meta ‘industry’; there are other such firms, led by ‘former’ Microsoft managers. Their business model is beneficial not only to themselves but also to Microsoft.

Some companies try to make money out of fear, specifically the phobia against FOSS. We need to learn to reject such companies. They are not trying to help. The more afraid people are of FOSS, the more money they make. █

Summary: Microsoft reveals that the NSA-friendly Skype is already capable of turning voice into text in real time, adding to existing concerns over Microsoft ‘reading’ people’s IM sessions in real time (and following links)

Thanks to some good reporting from Germany we already know that Microsoft is reading people’s text chats in Skype (almost certainly saving them all with no retention policy to limit this secret collection). Microsoft is now using Skype for bribes in Brazil, as we already noted the other day, but we should importantly remember that Microsoft is a PRISM company, the first one in fact (Microsoft is how PRISM started). Skype is a spying operation, so when Slashdot says Microsoft processes speech at its end we know there is no node-to-node communication. Microsoft intercepts the sound and processes it. Microsoft shows it has capability of saving as text people’s voice conversations as text as well (easier to process and later to search or assign triggers to).

Summary: Some of the latest examples of Microsoft disruption (interfering with the competition) rather than Microsoft production

Earlier this week we showed how Microsoft (through CIS) was recruiting moles to help fight FOSS by confusion and infiltration. It is typical and very routine an exercise for Microsoft. Nokia is one recent example. Microsoft is actively recruiting moles who would come across to the public as pro-FOSS while also pro-Microsoft (while on Microsoft’s payroll), contributing — covertly — to a false perception that Microsoft is now accepted by FOSS and is a FOSS player. It is a bit like the strategy of undercover spies; it’s how the CIA infiltrates humanitarian groups (such as HRW) and pushes its agenda as pro-human rights, or commending the CIA (from supposedly humanitarian groups) for its aggressive action under the guise of “pro-rights” (women’s rights, democracy, freedom and so on).

Microsoft is not genuinely changing. It hardly changes anything at all. It is definitely not honest about changing its attitude towards FOSS. All it does is send AstroTurfers to critical sites like Techrights (as Microsoft did with horrible insults) while running attack ads against FOSS projects. All that Microsoft is trying to change (and barely succeeds at doing) is the public’s perception. Microsoft’s ads that seek to recruit moles state this explicitly. Under the supposed leadership of Satya N. Microsoft continues to extort FOSS using patents. Ballmer seems to be moving further away from Microsoft, but Gates who is the bigger bully (always has been) recrntly increased his role at Microsoft. Wired (Condé Nast) helps openwash Gates these days, but this is clearly part of the marketing charade. People like Mozilla’s CEO get pushedout with much help from Microsoft-linked press (never mind the bizarre nature of these tactics [1]), but a longtime criminal like Gates gets portrayed as a Saint. He buys media companies and pays many off, including a lot of blogs.

A few weeks ago, the CEO of Mozilla was forced to resign because it was revealed that in 2008, he supported Prop. 8, California’s ban on gay marriage. A bad law, yes, but 52% of Californians voted for it. Do they all have to resign? Obama was against gay marriage in 2008! Does he have to resign? Hillary came around just last year. Can she be President?

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

btrfs (butter filesystem) is something that many of us have been interested in for years. Here is a very recent talk from LinuxCon Japan 2014. There is some Japanese at the beginning of the talk, but fear not, it is in English. The presenter is Marc Merlin… who if I remember correctly used to make really extensive LinuxWorld reports back when LinuxWorld still existed. Anyway, enjoy this btrfs update. Here’s the slide deck PDF that goes along with the talk.

Graphics Stack

PathScale, the company behind the EKOPath compiler and other compiler technologies for both CPUs and GPGPU solutions, is looking to hire one or two kernel developers to work on improving the open-source AMD Linux graphics drivers… Particularly, to improve the GPGPU/OpenCL compute support in the driver, improve the Hawaii GPU and APU support, and potential optimizations for GPUs with 4GB+ of video memory.

In a new mailing list thread, Eric Anholt expresses regrets a few years ago when they began sending GLSL IR into their driver rather than using Mesa IR and improving that intermediate representation. Eric is now trying to get the Mesa IR support up to scratch so that it can be sent directly to classic Mesa drivers.

Benchmarks

With it looking like LLVM Clang 3.5 might finally have OpenMP support, I tested out Intel’s latest out-of-tree LLVM/Clang OpenMP code to see how the performance compares to GCC for this multi-processing API. Overall, the Clang results increase the level of competition against GCC.

Applications

Calibre, a software used for reading, managing, and converting eBooks, has been updated to version 1.39 and brings a few new features, including one for Kindle devices.

Calibre is mainly used for eBook conversion and as an eBook reader, but the application is capable of doing much more. Lately, the developer has been focusing on the editing part of the software and it shows in the release notes.

QEMU 2.1 should be released two months from today and with it will come ARM architecture improvements and other enhancements.

QEMU 2.1 just passed the mid-point in its development cycle with the release being planned for a 29 July debut. The soft-feature freeze is expected to happen in mid-June, the hard feature freeze at the start of July, and then three release candidates before the official release. The QEMU 2.1 schedule is available via the QEMU Wiki.

Wine or Emulation

GOG.com is a digital distribution platform that is specialized mostly in old games, but the company that owns it, CD Projekt Red, wants to also extend the support to include Linux. They are now looking for people to help them with Linux ports, although it seems that some of them will be distributed in Wine wrappers.

Games

The first thing to note is that I feel like my mind has done a complete turn-around on games being ported to Linux that aren’t “native”. Native ports are great yes that’s true of course, but I doubt we will ever have every developer and publisher on board with that. Publishers & Developers are in it for the money, no matter what they say if they didn’t sell well they would be in trouble and wouldn’t be able to continue, time is also money and time-saving for a tiny platform where they are likely to see ~5% of their sales from will probably look appealing.

OpenELEC 4.0.3, an embedded operating system built specifically to run XBMC, the open source entertainment media hub, has been released and integrates some of the latest proprietary drivers available.

The OpenELEC developers have outed yet another maintenance version of their distribution, but nothing major has changed since the 4.0.2 build. The most important changes are the upgrades for the drivers and for some of the other packages.

First, it’s now been a month that Linux Game Publishing has been offline. It was on 29 April when they were going to do “be migrating hosts and servers over the next few days” in an effort to improve reliability of their hosting infrastructure, etc. They’ve now been offline for one month with no further communication with their main web-site resolving, etc. The state of their Internet-based DRM solution for their recent titles is not clear and LGP hasn’t responded to any requests for comments, including Facebook comments by their customers earlier this month.

I’m willing to bet you have a dilapidated HP, Gateway, or Dell laptop gathering dust in a closet somewhere. Or perhaps like me you have a MacBook Air that you tote around to conventions or use at home for work, writing, and browsing the web. Maybe an Ubuntu or Linux Mint box is more your speed. What if you could resurrect those aging notebooks and put them to use playing the newest PC games? Or inject your Mac and Linux machines with the ability to play all those Windows PC games they only dream of? You can do precisely that with a new feature from Valve’s Steam software and these instructions.

The Steam developers usually make a number of intermediary releases before a stable and a large version of the application are launched. The current update is just one of these versions and, even if it’s a Beta, some users might notice improvements.

Valve takes its time when it comes to improving the Steam client and its updates take care of just a few things. This way, it is easy to spot a problem if something goes wrong after an update for the software.

Painkiller Hell & Damnation, a remake and a sequel for the immensely popular Painkiller made by People Can Fly in 2004, has been available on the Linux platform for quite some time and now the fans get to buy it with an 80% discount.

Epic Games has shared their “first play” (albeit rather short and basic) footage of the new Unreal Tournament game that’s in early stages of development with the community.

Epic Games shared the news earlier this month that there’s going to be a new Unreal Tournament game powered by Unreal Engine 4, will be free, and will have native Linux support. Epic is pushing Unreal Engine 4 for Linux gamers to the extent they’re also after Phoronix Test Suite support, etc.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

Now with System Settings this is a “way into the future” job – because we are working on the “bit-by-bit” production model AND lets be frank here, the devs are more or less working 24/7 getting the first version of Plasma Next out the door.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

The 3.13.x branch of GNOME is strictly for development and it will eventually evolve into the stable 3.14, but that’s a long way ahead. Until then, the developers free to implement changes and new features.

The previous version in this branch brought some very interesting changes and the developers removed Windows and Twitter support from the software, among other changes.

I spent last weekend in Beijing attending GNOME Asia 2014; yeah, long trip from Europe just for 3 days, but it was totally worth it. The worst part of it was of course fighting jet lag when I arrived, and fighting it again 3 days later when I came back to Spain

There are hundreds and hundreds of Linux distributions available at this point in time. Most users stick with the major Linux distributions. But what is a major Linux distribution?

Off the top of my head I can think of Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Zorin, Elementary, Mageia, Slackware, Gentoo and Puppy. Then there are the Ubuntu spin-offs such as Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Gnomebuntu and Edubuntu

Behind all these distributions there are a host of other distributions that you may have heard of but not yet tried. Peppermint, Manjaro, Point Linux, Crunchbang, Kali, Bodhi, Knoppix, SLAX, SolydXK, Antix, Chakra, OS4, Korora, KWheezy and SparkyLinux. I could go on and on.

Screenshots

Red Hat Family

Earlier this month, when Red Hat was busy delivering a flurry of OpenStack-related announcements, news also came from the company that it is collaborating to drive Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and telecommunications technology into OpenStack. Red Hat is forming alliances aimed at delivering a carrier-grade telecommunications offering based on Linux, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), and OpenStack.

Fedora

Last week I shared a concept for the Fedora.next logos with you, and I received quite a lot of feedback. Thank you for that. Smile The feedback I received mostly clustered along these lines in some form or another:

The server logomark doesn’t read as a server to everyone – it’s too rounded.
The workstation logomark looks too much like a flip phone to read as a laptop.
Okay. I thought I might take that feedback and fart around with the designs some more, and record a bit of a stream of consciousness of what the heck I did so you can follow along and see where it’s coming from. I opened up the SVG source of the original designs in Inkscape and poked around a bit.

Fedora 21 when released late in 2014 will effectively retire support for a lot of old graphics card drivers.

Going back to last year have been plans to drop support for really old GPUs from Fedora 21. It’s been a few months since then and these really old X.Org drivers are still set to be slaughtered from the Fedora repository.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

“We are pleased to offer the first ARM 64-bit Server-on-a-Chip production silicon with full certification for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, including all the relevant server workloads and tools to allow commercial hyperscale deployments on X-Gene,” Applied Micro’s vice-president Gaurav Singh said in a statement. “The X-Gene plus Ubuntu offering means enterprises can now capture substantial TCO savings for their scale-out datacenters.”

Canonical wants to make it as easy to manage Ubuntu-powered clouds from your smartphone as from a traditional PC. That’s the goal behind a new mobile-friendly interface for browsing open source Juju charms that Canonical’s design team outlined recently.

An “emergency cleanup interface” has been added to the Mir server for trying to better recover the system in case of problems.

Alexandros Frantzis and Alan Griffiths of Canonical added the EmergencyCleanup interface on Wednesday. What this new Mir display server interface does is allow handlers to be defined that will be called in case of Mir hitting fatal errors. The hope is that if these handlers are called if Mir is going to crash or run into other serious problems, they’ll be able to return the system to a usable state in order to provide a clean user experience.

Flavours and Variants

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Xubuntu 14.04 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e.that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Xubuntu uses the lightweight XFCE desktop environment.

An open-spec COM that runs OpenWRT Linux on a MIPS-based Ralink RT5350 SoC has won its Indiegogo funding. The $20, IoT-focused “VoCore” measures 25 x 25mm.

How low can you go? Tiny computer-on-modules (COMs) for Internet of Things (IoT) applications are popping up everywhere, with recent, Linux-ready entries including Intel’s Atom or Quark-based Edison, Ingenic’s MIPS/Xburst-based Newton, Acme Systems’s ARM9/SAM9G25 based Arrietta G25, and SolidRun’s quad-core i.MX6-based MicroSOM. Now, an unnamed Chinese startup has raised over six times its $6,000 Indiegogo funding goal for what could be the smallest, cheapest Linux COM yet.

Intel announced a Linux- and Atom-based hardware/software platform called Intel In-Vehicle Solutions for assisted driving and eventually self-driving cars.

Intel says its Internet of Things Group achieved revenue of $482 million in the first quarter, up 32 percent year-over-year, “driven by strong demand for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems.” While some of that appears to be Windows-based, Linux is the chief platform going forward in its current line-up of Tizen Linux based IVI reference systems. Linux is also the platform driving the newly announced Intel In-Vehicle Solutions (IIVS), which initially combines IVI with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) features. IIVS will eventually migrate to semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles, says Intel.

This week Samsung is drawing a lot of buzz with its announcement of the Samsung Digital Health Initiative, which will be based on open hardware platforms and open software architecture. The initiative has several arms, but one primary area of focus will be on delivering very smart wearable devices that go well beyond the capabilities of wearable health devices such as Fitbit. In fact, Samsung officials are touting wearable devices that monitor blood pressure, deliver electrocardiogram (ECG) readings, and more.

If publishers tune out at the mention of “open source” approaches to publishing, it’s largely out of habit. For many, the idea of making content freely and publicly available is akin to surrendering the central asset of their businesses. But open source digital technologies are encouraging some to reconsider, according to experts who spoke in New York yesterday afternoon at the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) at Book Expo America.

With a grant from Intel, LSU CCT is being asked to develop open-source software focusing on simulation of flows through microscopes, such as those found in rocks involved in oil and gas extraction, by extending OpenFOAM, a popular open-source simulation software, according to the release.

BSD

The developers of GhostBSD didn’t waste any time and released yet another development version, although they are now out of the Alpha stage. Maybe we won’t get as many Beta releases so that the final version is not delayed.

According to the changelog, cpio has been replaced with rsync for copying files during the installation, the kernel is now writable on the live DVD, which solves graphic card kernel loading for Intel and ATI, and the base of the distribution, FreeBSD10.0-RELEASE, has been updated to version 10.0-RELEASE-p3.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it.

Public Services/Government

Cities and states around the country such as San Francisco, Oklahoma, and New Hampshire have passed bills to require municipalities to use open source software when possible. Why not a tech hub like New York City?

On Thursday, Council Member Ben Kallos will introduce the Free and Open Source Software Act that, if passed by the City Council, would bring the requirement to New York. The law would require the City to look first to open source software before purchasing proprietary software. In addition, Kallos, chair of the Council’s government operations committee, will introduce a Civic Commons bill to create a central site to store all of the open source software the City uses which could promote sharing among cities.

NanGate, Inc. – a provider of design-specific standard cell library IP and EDA tools for layout automation – announced that it has released the first edition of a new 15nm open cell library (OCL). NanGate developed the library IP based on North Carolina State University’s FreePDK 15nm open-source, non-manufacturable process. Challenges such as designing with FinFET transistors, metal double patterning, advanced interconnect layers and metal gate restrictions are represented in the new PDK.

Open Data

Technology enables us to understand today what risks may come tomorrow. The World Bank Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) works with governments, communities and other actors to bring together technology and information to help them understand and reduce natural disaster risks.

Open Hardware

3D printing is not yet a mainstream business activity, but the technology has progressed to the point where users can print three-dimensional objects and manufacture their own prototypes and replacement parts with relative ease. The open source community is advancing 3D printing technology by conducting experiments that could take it to the next level.

Health/Nutrition

Even though the state of Oregon enacted a law to override the ability of localities to regulate their own food systems, local ballot measures to ban GMO crops passed overwhelmingly in Jackson and Josephine Counties on May 20, according to news reports. “We fought the most powerful and influential chemical companies in the world and we won,” Elise Higley, a local farmer with the anti-GMO group Our Family Farms Coalition, told The Oregonian. The Progressive magazine tells the backstory below and reveals that the preemption measure shares language with an ALEC model bill.

That’s right. If you don’t buy into everything told you, it’s bad for your health. This is the stuff of dreams for anyone who wants you to buy into everything they say. I’m currently writing about the City of London Police so I’ll pass this link onto them, I’m sure they can use it. The researchers, who amongst the many things they fail to grasp (from the report I read) go on to say:

Security

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a not-for-profit charitable organization focused on improving software security. OWASP works on the principles of open source software, particularly the idea that the community is the force of creation and contribution. The unique aspect here is that OWASP is not software, rather a set of guidelines created by the community to help developers plug security holes in their code.

Security has become a very important aspect of software development lately, but not everyone is aware of ways to write secure code. You may think, “my team of developers is very experienced/skilled/efficient, they can write 100% secure code,” but if you follow the news you are aware that even bigshot websites are regularly brought down or have their user data compromised. Your website should be well-prepared to avoid such attacks by following these guidelines by OWASP.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

TransCanada will have to meet two extra safety conditions if it gets the go-ahead to build the northern portion of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, due to concerns from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) that defects could occur during construction.

PHMSA slipped in the two conditions towards the end of the appendices of the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement, released this January. They dictate that TransCanada hires a third-party contractor chosen by PHMSA to monitor Keystone XL’s construction and report any faulty construction techniques back to the agency. In addition, TransCanada will be required to adopt a quality management program to make sure that Keystone XL is “built to the highest standards by both Keystone personnel and its many contractors.”

Finance

It is so deeply embedded, so seamlessly rooted and integrated into what we think of as ‘our self’, that when expressed oftentimes it is (intentionally) mistaken for something else entirely. Our indoctrination begins at birth in tiny little ways, mostly personal in nature, with our parents and care givers the initial delivery system. From day one out of the womb we are conditioned via adoring smiles and Coochie Coochie Coo’s that we are exceptional, one of a kind and King of the house. A few minutes of screaming has everyone running to stem the tears and change the pee pants. And it is all downhill from here.

The collapse of the monetary system awaits the world in the near future, says financial expert James Rickards. Russia and China’s desire to rid the US dollar of its global reserve currency status is an early sign of the “increasingly inevitable” crisis.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s campaign is reportedly negotiating a settlement with prosecutors in the long-running “John Doe” criminal campaign finance probe — and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which for months has attacked prosecutors and portrayed the investigation as baseless, is livid.

Censorship

Privacy

Are you aware that smart devices can collect information about your personal activities? If not, you are one of the 53% of British internet users that were unaware that smart devices such as smart TVs, fitness devices and in car-navigation systems can collect data.

Sometimes you have to wonder about people who hold government positions and the absolutely ludicrous statements they make. Following Ed Snowden’s big NBC interview, NBC apparently asked former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, to respond to Snowden’s pretty convincing claims that all the hand-wringing about “harms” he caused have no basis in fact. In the interview, Snowden points out, accurately, that no one has yet been able to show a single individual harmed by the revelations. McFaul then makes what may be the single dumbest statement we’ve heard to date on this whole debate, arguing that the “harm” is that other countries now trust us less — and that this is somehow Snowden’s fault, rather than, you know, the fault of the NSA which is doing the surveillance…

A near-complete failure as Secretary of State (if you are not sure, read this), Kerry is apparently relegated within the Obama administration to the role of mumbling bully-boy statements, faux-machismo rantings whose intended audience and purpose are very, very unclear. Did Kerry think he might persuade Snowden to take up the challenge and fly back to the U.S.? Maybe meet Kerry in the Octagon mano-a-mano? No, Kerry sounded much more like Grandpa Simpson than America’s Senior Diplomat. – See more at: http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2014/05/29/kerry-tells-snowden-to-man-up-and-come-home/#sthash.PUdzNxZj.dpuf

The Cabinet Office has started an early pre-consultation process looking at removing barriers to sharing or linking different databases across government departments. The rationale is that this can help Government “design and implement evidence based policy, for example to tackle social mobility, assist economic growth and prevent crime”.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

iracy is wrong, piracy is theft. That’s that we are told. I personally refuse to watch the trash from Hollywood or your mainstream music et al, mainly because I think its manufactured nonsense aimed at markets either too lazy or too slow witted to find entertainment in more engaging mediums (such as reading, listening to the radio…you heard of those?)

Now despite Piracy NOT being theft (if applied to Sec 1 of the Theft Act in the UK, which for me clearly defines what theft is), today we are looking at some claims made by the City of London police and finding out exactly what they are doing to combat the threat they claim of “piracy”.

This is not an article on if you agree with infringement of copyright or not. I support CC and FOSS – I have no care or interest in the industries which make these multi-million pound movies, nor the movies themselves.

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City of London Police – Why won’t you name the sites you claim to have closed down? – I believe I know the answer and its because they are not closed at all and just some word play by people who either don’t understand the concepts they are talking about or are intentionally looking to mislead. – Is there any other reason? Are my opinions incorrect? Please by all means give your reasons.